Reexamining Pigafetta’s Battle of Mactan
By Trizer D. Mansueto
Had it not been for Antonio Pigafetta, the ethnographer, people would know very little about explorer Ferdinand Magellan and the world’s first successful circumnavigation.
Had it not been for Antonio Pigafetta, the ethnographer, people would know very little about explorer Ferdinand Magellan and the world’s first successful circumnavigation.
He may not be considered in the league of the country’s renowned national heroes such as Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio. But there is one Visayan hero who fought for the nation’s independence from Spain with the same vigor and passion.
For several decades now, the mere mention of Semana Santa (Holy Week) on Bantayan Island in northern Cebu conjures up images of a fiesta.
The Philippines is quite out of the way unlike other maritime countries in Southeast Asia. It also has smaller communities than Malaysia and Indonesia.
With just a few days of catechism, which consisted mostly of rhetorical remarks by Ferdinand Magellan, it would have been impossible for King Humabon and the people of Cebu during his time to have fully understood the Christian faith brought to them by the Spaniards in 1521.
Most Filipinos are familiar with Jose Rizal’s life because the national hero wrote voluminously about himself and his activities.
Except for Medellin, Madridejos, Tabuelan and some other places, Cebu’s towns were founded during the more than 300 years of Spanish rule.
In 2011, a team of archaeologists led by professor Jose Eleazar Bersales and several staff members of the National Museum unearthed a burial site along the shoreline of Barangay Poblacion in San Remigio town, about 120 kilometers north of Cebu City.
Some accounts of Blessed Pedro Calungsod’s origins point to his Visayan lineage. But historians have difficulty confirming which part of the Visayas he truly came from in the absence of material proof.
